Mesoeucrocodylia
Mesoeucrocodylia is the clade that includes Eusuchia and crocodyliforms formerly placed in the paraphyletic group Mesosuchia. The group appeared during the Early Jurassic, and continues to the present day.

LiterallyMiguel · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CrocodyliformesPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Pseudosuchia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB
Time the record covers
At least 227 million years on record.
The record covers at least 227.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 237 Mya to 0 Mya.
4,592 occurrences of Mesoeucrocodylia on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4,592 occurrences- Late Triassicunder 1%
- Early Jurassicunder 1%
- Middle Jurassic2%
- Late Jurassic4%
- Early Cretaceous11%
- Late Cretaceous29%
- Paleocene7%
- Eocene14%
- Oligocene3%
- Miocene18%
- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene8%
- Holocene2%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
796 formations
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group199
- Willwood Formation169
- Morrison Formation86
- Koobi Fora Formation · Omo Group79
- Urumaco Formation70
- Denver Formation60
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The named rock units Mesoeucrocodylia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 772 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 821 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mesoeucrocodylia and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Mesoeucrocodylia and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
2,905 taxa- Crocodylus66 sites
- Crocodylia58 sites
- Equus38 sites
- Trionychidae36 sites
- Clarias35 sites
- Bovidae34 sites
- Alcelaphini33 sites
- Geochelone33 sites
- Trionyx33 sites
- Lepisosteus31 sites
- Osteichthyes31 sites
- Crocodylus niloticus30 sites
- Hipparion28 sites
- Euthecodon brumpti26 sites
- Aves25 sites
- Mammalia24 sites
- Palaeoloxodon recki24 sites
- Reptilia24 sites
- Testudines24 sites
- Gazella22 sites
- Kobus22 sites
- Suidae22 sites
- Theropithecus oswaldi22 sites
- Giraffidae21 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 1,489 sites for Mesoeucrocodylia, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1,803 references- Stratigraphy and mammalian paleontology of the McCullough Peaks, northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming: Implications for biochronology, basin development, and community reorganization across the Paleocene-Eocene boundary148
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections72
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota68
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil vertebrates and so forth58
- Fossil crocodilians from Colombia and the Cenozoic history of the Crocodilia in South America52
- Exceptional continental record of biotic recovery after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction47
- Review of the Late Cretaceous-early Paleogene crocodylomorphs of Europe: Extinction patterns across the K-PG boundary42
- Vertebrate faunal changes through Lancian and Puercan time in southern Wyoming41
- A 60-million-year Cenozoic history of western Amazonian ecosystems in Contamana, eastern Peru38
- Evolutionary relationships and systematics of Atoposauridae (Crocodylomorpha: Neosuchia): implications for the rise of Eusuchia33
- Italian Cenozoic crocodilians: taxa, timing and palaeobiogeographic implications31
- Koobi Fora Research Project The Fossil Ungulates: Proboscidea, Perissodactyla, Suidae31
Each of the 4,592 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 1,791 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Mesoeucrocodylia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- LiterallyMiguel
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mesoeucrocodylia was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCrocodyliformes through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Whetstone and Whybrow 1983